It was while working on my Lanier family lines, I discovered I was related as a 3rd cousin to the poet Sidney Lanier. The following is a brief biography on a fascinating man.
Gayle VH
Poet, Playwright and Confederate soldier. Sidney was born Feb. 3, 1842 in and reared in Macon, Bibb county, Georgia. His father was Robert Sampson Lanier, a respected lawyer in Macon. His grandfather was Sterling C. Lanier, owner of hotels and resorts in Tennessee and Georgia.
Sidney Lanier became known through his poetry as a spokesman for the defeated Confederacy. He was an 1860 graduate of Oglethorpe University and tutored there until the Civil War. He supported the secession of Georgia. In June 1861 he joined the Macon Guards (which became Company I of the 4th Georgia) and was assigned to the Virginia theater through most of the war. On March 9, 1862, he witnessed the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. He transferred to mounted signal duty in late summer 1862, and served on the staff of Major General S. G. French. In May 1863, he visited the battlefield of Chancellorsville, which inspired his 1865 poem, "The Dying Words of Jackson." He later served variously as a scout, courier, and signalman aboard blockade runners until being captured at sea on November 2, 1864. He was sent to Point Lookout Prison, Maryland, where he sat out the end of the war.
His 1867 novel of the war period, Tiger-Lilies, and his poems brought his antebellum views of the South before the Northern and Southern public. The novel also dealt with prison life. His more popular poems reflected these sentiments but were sometimes racist. They included: "The Raven Days," "Civil Rights," "Betrayal," "Corn," "Laughter in the Senate," and "The Revenge of Hamish." Before pursuing writing full-time, he practiced law, and wrote in 1878 the poem, "The Marshes of Glynn" which endeared him to his native state. In 1879 he became a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. While a POW his health was permanently impaired and he died of consumption (tuberculosis) in Lynn, North Carolina, as unhappy over the hack work he wrote to support his family as he was over the late war and the lost of his beloved antebellum South. The largest lake in Georgia is named in his honor (Lake Lanier) as is the longest spanning bridge in the state. There are numerous schools, parks, dams, streets and a county in Georgia named in his honor. Texas has honored him as well throughout Austin and San Antonio.
He died September 7, 1888 while in Lynn, North Carolina and his body was transferred to the Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. He left a widow Mary Day and four sons; Charles Day Lanier, Sidney Clopton Lanier Jr., Henry Wysham Lanier, and Robert Sampson Lanier (I). Each son lived to adulthood and settled in the northeast.
For additional family information please refer to his Family Group Sheet, as well as his father's and grandfather's.
